


Sepia

by Cryo_Bucky, debwalsh



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Art, Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2017, First Kiss, Inspired by Art, M/M, Memory Related, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Photography, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Recovery, Slow Build, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryo_Bucky/pseuds/Cryo_Bucky, https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/pseuds/debwalsh
Summary: Inspired by the art of Cryo_Bucky for the Cap Reverse Big Bang 2017.The road to recovery reaches an unexpected crossroads when a stranger offers Steve and Bucky a glimpse into their own pasts.





	1. Prelude:  The Inspiration

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 is the art that inspired the story. Please, look at it and enjoy it. Just what are those two up to, hmmm?
> 
> The first writer to claim the story in the RBB inexplicably bailed, which meant I (Deb) got the opportunity to give it a try as a "pinch hitter." It's been a pleasure working with Cryo_Bucky to build a world around the art. 
> 
> Please bookmark this work so you'll get notified when the story is posted. It won't be long now, but I wanted to make sure you got a chance to appreciate the art for a little while first.

* * *

[](http://cryo-bucky.tumblr.com/post/161305535498/one-of-my-arts-for-the-capreversebb-there-is-a)

Click the image for a larger version hosted on Cryo_Bucky's Tumblr!

* * *

In the beginning, it started with an idea that grew into art. From the art, grew the prompt:

 **Art title:** Brooklyn Boys  
**Ship:** Steve/Bucky  
**Canon:** MCU  
**Artist’s Comments:** {to come}


	2. Sepia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery is a process. Sometimes progress is small and quiet, sometimes it's revelatory. Sometimes we watch someone else, proud of the baby steps they're making, unaware that they are leading us on the road to our own recovery.
> 
> Nearly a year after Bucky finally comes home, he and Steve discover a connection to their past they never thought they'd find, and with it, a possible path to redemption.
> 
> Extra special thanks to @elvashayam of the SBB Beta-Matchmaking team for being willing to beta this in an extreme pinch. All questionable commas are my own ... :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first saw this art in the RBB claims list, I liked it, but I didn't have a story for it. For me, that was the criteria for me trying to claim a piece of art - I needed to have the seed of an idea in my head in order to claim the art, so I could start writing right away. I was inspired by lots of art, but this piece, for some reason, didn't form a story in my head. I ultimately got the piece that inspired A New Cold War, and that kept me plenty busy. And honestly, because I've plotted out an entire year in the life, it will keep me busy for some time to come.
> 
> But what about this piece of art? Well, the RBB mods put out a call for a pinch hitter when the original author who'd claimed this piece fell through. I got the e-mail, I looked at the art, and thirty seconds later - I kid you not - I had the idea for this story. I very quickly fell in love with the idea, and I'm grateful that Cryo_Bucky liked it.
> 
> When I was very young, I remember going through a box of photographs that belonged to my grandmother. That was my first introduction to the Brownie camera (I remember playing with hers, a relic of the Depression as I recall), and the power of photographs. Years later, my grandmother was reunited with her estranged brother, and out came the box - much to the shock and surprise of my Mom and her siblings. None of them had seen the contents of that box before - they hadn't even known it existed. What followed that evening was kind of magical, as everyone reconnected with their younger selves through the power of the images that had been caught on camera. A Brownie camera. Memories, long forgotten, came to the surface, and brought with them feelings of joy, of pride, of family. Of connection and healing.
> 
> So that's some of what I drew on for this story. Delaying those mundane tasks that mean letting go of a loved one? Yeah, still doing that nearly three years after my Mom passed. Bleeding art as a means of coping, completely unaware of having done it? Been there, done that. Finding healing in the act of creation? You better believe it.
> 
> But I digress. Here's Sepia. I hope you like it. 
> 
> \- Deb

Steve looked at the curator and smiled. She seemed so hopeful, so eager to please. “It’s not every day we get to meet the subject of one of our exhibits,” she explained, blushing as she toyed with the collar of her blouse. That was the word, right? A woman’s shirt was still a blouse. It was a pretty blouse, pink with a delicate drape, topped by a nicely cut black jacket. Tailored trousers, not a skirt; it was no longer a uniform for women to wear skirts and dresses. It took him a while to get used to that, but then again, Peggy had often worn service trousers because they were far more practical for the muck and the blood than a skirt.

His mind was wandering. And she was still speaking.

“… private collectors. Back in the 1960s, there was a resurgence in interest in Captain America memorabilia. Of course, the two greatest collections never went on the block. We were very lucky that they both donated their material to us.”

“Two greatest collections?” he echoed, frowning.

“Rebecca Barnes Proctor, and Margaret Carter.”

Rebecca. Bucky’s younger sister. He could picture her, her hair carefully pin-curled and waved, her white bobby socks and pleated skirt, white blouse with the little Peter Pan collar and the black velvet bowtie the nuns made the girls wear. Another kind of uniform women were forced into. Life shouldn’t be about uniforms, he thought. You suited up when you went into battle, and that gave the uniform meaning. The way women were required to wear certain types of clothing … did that mean they were going into a form of battle? Funny, he’d never thought of it that way before …

He realized she was waiting for him to respond, and here he was wool-gathering. He’d spent a lot of time there since the Potomac, since the fall of SHIELD. Trapped in his head, and lost in memory, trying to figure out how he could have changed the past, done something differently. How he should have known that Bucky was still alive in the hands of Hydra. How he could have saved him.

“Captain Rogers, are you okay? Would you like a glass of water or something?”

“No, sorry. I … Rebecca was a teenager the last time I saw her. Of course she married. I guess they all did. It’s what you did, wasn’t it.”

“Well, that’s not my area of expertise, but yes, I believe that was the accepted social contract of the time.”

“The donation that Becca made. What was in it? I mean, I left some of my things with the Barnes family when I shipped out –“

Bucky’s family. That must mean there were albums, right? Bucky’s dad was always taking pictures, kept threatening to send them into the magazines like _Life Magazine_ or _National Geographic_ to become a famous photographer and see the world. He never went beyond the streets of Brooklyn, but his imagination was big, and he’d inspired Bucky to dream big, too. And with him, Steve. Steve and Bucky had gotten to see the world though not in the way George Barnes had foreseen.

Nothing about the world had turned out the way George Barnes had envisioned. 

“Were there photographs? Becca’s collection – were there pictures?”

The curator shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid not. That would have been a _find_ – photographs of you before the serum? There are only the few that were with your military records, and one that had been in Ms. Carter’s collection. Strangely enough, it was stamped ’SSR’ on the back. Do you think she pinched it?”

“Peggy had a picture of me? Before the serum?” The thought of Peggy Carter’s regard before the procedure, before he was big and buff and boring, made Steve’s heart clench. There weren’t many people who’d seen Steve Rogers before the serum, or even after. But Peggy had always seen him, and surprisingly, she’d liked what she’d seen. He could count the number of people for whom that was true on one hand and a bit. Mom. Peggy. The Barnes family. Bucky.

He grimaced and shook his head slightly. “There weren’t many pictures of little Stevie Rogers before the serum. No one really wanted any. But the Barnes family - surely there must have been family pictures –Bucky’s dad was mad for photographs.”

“I did check – you’d expect a bequest like this to be brimming with photographs, after all. There was a notation in the records that the family photographs had been lost in a fire sometime in the mid-1950s. It was a miracle the family had anything left, but that may be because the daughters had some of the things, and they had separate homes by then. The curator at the time must have asked. No, the collection that was donated consisted mostly of letters, journals. No photographs.” She stopped herself then, and looked at him, a tinge of horror crossing her face as it morphed to pity. “Oh, I’m sorry. You were hoping, weren’t you?”

“Counting on it, actually. I don’t have anything. All my things are gone, except for what the SSR had in their possession. Even the few photographs of my mother, gone.”

“Oh. Oh, I am so sorry.” She glanced toward the small cardboard box containing notebooks, a couple of drawing pads, newspaper articles, letters. “Everything’s been catalogued. The letters, ah, the letters have been read, of course. There’s a sheet cataloguing them,” she waved jerkily toward the box.

He should be grateful. He and Bucky had lived on the margins, nobodies just scraping by until history had grabbed them each by the scruff of the neck and sent them off to do battle with enemies neither had ever imagined. At least there was something to show they’d been there, been Steve and Bucky before they’d been Captain America and the Winter Soldier. He should be grateful this meager collection existed, and be grateful the Smithsonian was willing to release this box to him.

He tried on a smile, not a very good one, he thought, judging from the pained expression on her face, but it was the best he could offer at the moment. He thanked her for her time and her kindness, and she smiled back, sad around the edges, relieved, like she was happy he’d be going now and taking the little box of things with him, physical evidence that there’d been a life before the serum, meaningful only to him and, maybe, if he ever found him again, Bucky.

He shook her hand, careful not to grip too hard, and then he tucked the box under his arm and exited the museum.

&&&

They found him a little more than a year after the fall of the Triskelion, following a trail of remains – architectural, technological and questionably human – that ultimately led them to a silo sunk into a mountain in Siberia, a hole in the ground as desolate as the landscape under which it squatted, a malignancy in a dead land.

He stood in the center of the chamber at the bottom of the silo, surrounded by the debris of shattered cryo-tubes that had long ago failed, their occupants desiccated and gray, mummified by the thin, cold air.

There was no way to know how long he’d stood there, bloodied, dirty, emaciated, worn-down to a husk. But as soon as they entered the chamber, it was clear he knew they were there, a shift in his muscles telegraphing instant alertness, a twitch that betrayed preparedness, a breath that spoke of awareness.

Tony had released the visor and helmet of the suit, but he kept the rest on, weapons on standby as they inched into the chamber, the crypt of an outmoded idea. Steve held up his hand to the others – Stark, Wilson, Barton, Romanoff. He signaled only he would move forward. Tony made to argue, but Natasha held him back. Barton nodded – somehow, of all of them, he got it, even more than Nat did. Sam gave him an intense, “You best know what you’re doing,” look, and Steve had to flash a smile. He nodded his own understanding.

Bucky was standing there in the remnants of his tactical suit, the leather torn and mended so often that in some places, the only thing holding it together was the repairs. At his feet laid an enormous hammer, the head broken off from the shaft, scuffed, even dented in places. Drops of dried blood trailed from his right hand, the flesh hand. Metal plates along the outside edge of the prosthetic hand were dulled by impacts, scratched and mangled in spots.

Steve turned his head to follow Bucky’s line of sight, and that’s when it registered.

A chair.

According to the Winter Soldier file, _the_ chair.

It was rubble now, fractured and broken and wrenched apart by white hot, burning anger and pain. Had that anger burned everything in its path?

“They said you were dead,” he whispered then, a voice deadened by disuse. Or perhaps shredded by too much screaming.

“I’m sorry,” Steve offered softly, knowing it could never make things right. Could never take back time and give this man his life again.

“They said you’d never come for me,” Bucky added, still staring at the chair, still … _still_. In all Steve’s imaginary reunions, Bucky had never been so … bereft of life. So much a void.

“They hurt me,” he said with finality, his voice stronger, but laced with pain, childlike in its confusion.

“They’ll pay for that,” Steve replied fervently, his hand moving without conscious thought to touch, to reassure, to … he did not know what. He caught himself before he truly invaded Bucky’s space, pulled back and forced his hand back to his side.

That was when Bucky chose to move, turning his head to see the gesture, and a whimper broke free at the same time his frozen façade crumpled into a grimace of pain. “They already did,” was all he said, but Steve felt that silently, he was screaming anew.

&&&

Bucky had been back for about nine months, give or take, and he’d made progress. The man they’d recovered from that silo had been half-starved, exhausted beyond endurance and confused and angry in equal parts. When he was questioned, he was unable to answer basic questions like “When was the last time you ate?” and “How long ago did you sleep?” The Asset neither ate nor slept, and what was left in its aftermath was still learning those things as of Siberia. 

What the Asset did know was Hydra, infiltration, rapid response, and scorched earth. He’d systematically taken out no less than thirty installations in the months after the Potomac, leaving hundreds of bodies in his wake. There’d been a serious tap dance to convince authorities to stand down. The media had been apoplectic over the idea of another 1940s super soldier, especially one with the kill record of the Winter Soldier. Some had demanded summary execution. Veterans’ groups had demanded restitution of full benefits to the longest-held American prisoner of war. Amnesty International weighed in, along with other civil rights groups. The ACLU had stepped forward, with a number of other social justice legal groups, speaking for Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Fox News ate its own young, and there were actual on-air skirmishes between hosts. No one knew what to make of a killer tortured beyond human understanding, tortured for more years than most had been alive.

Bruce Banner and Helen Cho had done the heavy lifting to demonstrate the degree of torture Bucky had endured – neural pathways literally burned out of his skull; significant body modifications that were clearly made without consent; a network of scars on the outside and the inside that would take years to heal, if ever, even with his enhanced healing function. Helen’s credibility especially lent weight to the argument that Bucky wasn’t responsible while under Hydra’s control. The world wanted someone to blame. They didn’t get to blame James Buchanan Barnes. Steve Rogers and his friends in the future made sure of that.

Then the media storm just ended. A new scandal, a new opportunity to throw stones, a new celebrity with consensual body modifications, pushed Bucky out of the limelight, and into the first stages of recovery. He had his name, his many medals, his honorable discharge, his back pay, and his freedom. Now all he needed was himself, whoever that might be.

Recovery was a process, even more so when someone had been shattered back to atoms like Bucky had been. They would never know how long he’d gone without food or drink at the end there, but his enhanced metabolism had been feeding on itself so long that even his bones had been compromised. Advanced osteoporosis had left them weak, so the first objective had been to get him to put on weight, and reverse the calcium deficiency that threatened to make his bones brittle beyond repair. 

It had taken some serious effort to bring his system back to anything resembling normal, and he was just starting to look like he wasn’t terminally ill. He was still learning to eat again, still learning what tastes and textures he liked, and what he didn’t. Learning that it was okay to like something, okay to not. Okay to ask. Okay to say no.

Steve knew that the likelihood of ever getting back his best friend was slim to none. He accepted that, and accepted this new person, accepted his role, and accepted every setback and victory equally. He was careful never to ask, “Buck, do you remember?” but to greet each memory that Bucky discovered with, “That’s great, Buck. Tell me about it.” He worked hard to ensure that Bucky wasn’t pressured into being that young man who went off to war so many years ago. It was too much to ask for, too much to expect. Steve just wanted this Bucky to never fear again, to never feel pain again, to never be lost again. Never go hungry again, and never be afraid to fall asleep again. 

He’d take whatever else came with that and be glad of it.

Agency and choice were always at the forefront of Steve’s mind, coloring everything he did, said, even thought. And that’s why when the letter came through Pepper’s office, he showed it to Bucky, and together they made the decision to accept.

&&&

Since her parents died, Dana Gould spent very little time anywhere near New York City, or the borough of Brooklyn where she’d grown up. Grandma lived in a beautiful place outside Boston, where Dana worked in one of the more prestigious and famously ethical law firms in Beantown. Dana had no reason to go to New York – or Brooklyn – unless a deposition or discovery hearing required it. She tried to dodge the New York cases, preferring instead to stick close to home and Grandma, or if travel were necessary, she would often volunteer for quick trips to the western and northern states.

It wasn’t work that brought her to the tiny bank office near her old neighborhood today, though. It was Grandma’s last wishes.

She’d reached 100 and change, but her grandmother, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Sadie Fitzgerald, had finally succumbed to time, and here Dana stood, at Red Hook Trust, fingering a safe deposit key in her pocket like a talisman to ward against evil.

The bank manager was very nice, polite and sincere in her condolences. She escorted Dana to the safety deposit vault, and opened the drawer with her key, extracting a massive and ornate box.

“It’s too dark and stuffy down here. Let’s get you situated in a conference room upstairs. Let some light and air in, hmm?”

Dana had nodded, following silently in her wake. The funeral, the arrangements, executing the will, all that was already done. This was the last act, the last task before she had to face that Grandma was truly gone. That there was no one left.

She’d never realized that elevator rides could challenge the laws of relativity. Down was clearly longer than up, because they arrived at the conference room way too soon for her to absorb it all.

“Coffee? Tea? There’s pastries in the kitchen, along with vending machines, too. Just buzz me at 414 when you’re done. And Ms. Gould? I am very sorry for your loss. Your grandmother was an extraordinary woman.”

And with that, the bank manager whose name Dana had already forgotten was gone.

It was just her and a large metal box, decorated with art deco engraving, and inlaid mother of pearl. Ostentatious in its time, anachronistic now.

She decided to avail herself of the coffee and pastries in the kitchen, taking her time to chew slowly, then clean up after herself and wash her hands before sitting at the table again to stare at the box. She was delaying the inevitable, she knew. Holding on just a little longer. Finally, she made a face at herself and grabbed hold of the box with both hands, dragging it toward her. She fitted the key and turned, hearing the old metal complain a bit at being forced to move after so long. And then she opened the lid and stared down into its recess.

A thick manilla envelope with “Brooklyn Boys” written in Grandma’s bold block letters stared back at her. She lifted the envelope and peered briefly inside. Photographs and film. To be expected of a world famous photojournalist. Underneath the envelope was an average notebook, like the kind you could buy at any CVS or Walgreens, a pen threaded through the spiral wire. She opened it to find Grandma’s trademark copperplate neatly filled the pages. Notes and timelines, annotations and scribbles. Notes for another book, no doubt, one she’d set aside for some reason. Something fluttered inside, a sob or a sigh or a scream, she didn’t know which. Maybe all three. She felt suddenly that after everything she’d sifted through, everything she’d donated to charity, to the library at Wellesley, to the Smithsonian, this, this was the ultimate legacy of Sadie Fitzgerald. And it was meant for her to cherish.

Below the modern notebook were a couple of old-fashioned leather-bound journals, old and well worn. Cracked here and there, but they looked cared for, the leather still supple as though it had been recently oiled. Yet that wasn’t possible – she’d have known if Grandma had signed herself out of the facility to travel to Brooklyn at any point in the past five years, and she knew she hadn’t. She supposed they were just well-made. Grandma’s family had fared reasonably well during the Depression, and they’d always been a bit well off. She could picture Grandma picking the best quality journals for her thoughts and imaginings. After all, it was her imagination, her view of the world, and the vision through her viewfinders that had made her famous.

She opened the top journal and scanned down the page.

“Saw them again this stop. Brass is working hard to sell their unit. Can’t get close enough to speak with them, but managed to get a few shots in around the chorus girls. Thank goodness the folks at home want to see the USO chorines. Still can’t understand what happened to either of them. Need to TALK to them. Will keep trying.”

 _Them_. Who …?

Curiously, she picked up the envelope of photographs, and tugged one out. 

It took a moment for her to realize just who she was looking at.

Oh, Grandma. What a legacy!

&&&

Some days were better than others. Some days, Bucky came out of his room, joined Steve for coffee and eggs, fresh squeezed orange juice, and half a pound of bacon. Their small talk was comfortable, unfocused, and yet a miracle in itself. Bucky was here. Bucky was lucid. Bucky was present in his own head.

Other days, Bucky couldn’t bear to leave the safety of the blankets he’d knotted himself into during the night, a personal armor from the all too intrusive world. On those days, he wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t drink. Steve doubted he relieved himself. And he never spoke. Just remained cocooned, staring unblinking into the void that threatened to swallow him whole.

Those days were the worst, and usually followed nights filled with screams and thrashing. Early on, Steve thought he might be able to help with the nightmares, because his nights were often filled with them, too. But Bucky was braced for whatever haunted his night terrors, he’d flail and thrash even harder, and the noises that came out of him were even more horrific, not human, but inspired by pain beyond Steve’s imagination.

And Steve had been torn apart and remade at a cellular level, so Steve _knew_ pain. People forgot that. Steve never did.

So the days when Bucky exited his bedroom, hair combed, face washed, wearing clean clothes and even shoes? Those were days that Steve looked forward to and cherished. 

And when Bucky smiled at him?

Angels wept, the _Hallelujah Chorus_ rang out, and the world was awash in rainbows.

Steve never stopped to examine why Bucky’s smiles made him so sublimely happy. He was his best friend, his only connection to who he’d been - if Steve were being honest, to who he still was inside. Bucky had been through so much that Steve couldn’t imagine, yet here he still was, trying to put a life together. Bucky was so integral a part of Steve and Steve’s past that he’d been unable to function properly when he’d believed Bucky to be dead.

So, of course Bucky’s rare smiles set his heart racing, expanding in his chest til he felt filled with pride and pleasure.

And if Bucky opened his mouth to speak?

Well, the Earth stopped spinning on its axis to applaud, stars exploded into being, while the multitudes were hushed to hear what he had to say. And Steve felt suffused with sunshine and happiness so great, he thought his enhanced heart really would burst from pride and unfettered joy.

“That letter thing. Meeting’s today, right?” Bucky asked as he nibbled at his toast – wheat, buttered, slathered with orange marmalade from a shop Natasha had found in Soho.

Aware, eating, speaking, and remembering.

Steve honestly felt faint with happiness. He grinned at Bucky, nodded, and slid a plate loaded with eggs and bacon across the table. Bucky grinned at him, and popped a slice of bacon in his mouth and began chewing, letting his eyes flutter shut with pleasure.

Steve felt he could die happy. And it was only 7 a.m.

&&&

It had taken months to set up the meeting. One did not walk into Captain America’s life without being vetted, security checked, examined, x-rayed, passed from handler to handler to handler, and deemed worthy to walk through the doors of Stark Industries’ New York headquarters. That was only the first hurdle, and it had taken more effort and legal savvy to get this far than the most difficult cases of Dana’s career. 

So, she was through the door. Yay!

Grandma would be so proud.

Next, she was escorted to Happy Hogan’s office, where she sat holding her valise carefully over her lap, her fingers smoothing back and forth over the textured surface. He hurried in with an air of impatience and bluster, and held out a peremptory hand for the valise. She tightened her fingers on it and shook her head.

“I’m not gonna let you meet with Captain America until I review what’s in the case, Ms. Gould. So you might as well hand it over.”

“It’s not for Captain America. It’s for Steven Grant Rogers. And James Buchanan Barnes. Not anyone else,” she shook her head, jaw tight, and turned her best “my client will eviscerate your client” glare on him.

He dropped into his swivel chair and slumped there, fingers toying with a pen on his desk as he turned from side to side, regarding her. Not with contempt, she noted, but with something that looked like it could be burgeoning respect.

“Do you know how many people try to get in to see Cap who don’t even know his last name?” he asked her suddenly.

“I can imagine. Celebrity hounds. Star fuckers?” she asked with a quirk of her eyebrow. He nodded slowly. “That’s not why I’m here. You know that. I made it very clear in my letter, in my phone calls, in my interviews, in the notarized documentation I’ve provided. Honestly, if someone lasts this long into the process, surely it must be a gimme at this point.”

He shifted his head and let a little smile play at his lips. “Got me there. Nobody’s ever gotten this far, to be honest. Press go a different route. They have to face Miss Potts if they get past Legal. You got lucky,” Hogan told her with a shrug and a sudden grin.

“Lucky,” she repeated with a tone just shy of a sneer. “Back in the neighborhood we’d call that being from Brooklyn. So?”

“So, Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes are waiting to meet you. A word of warning about Barnes. He’s had a rough time. Rougher than, well, anyone, ever.”

“I followed the coverage.”

“Well, recovery is a process. Some days, there’s progress. Some days, there’s … not. Be patient, follow your cues from Captain Rogers, and don’t push. If he seems agitated for any reason, just sit quietly. Cap’ll know what to do.”

“Okay. I can do that. I’m not here to upset anyone. I’m just –“

“Following through with your grandmother’s legacy, yeah, I got it. And I know who she was – her photos were amazing. Miss Potts has the full set of books in the library. When you first called, I took a look at ‘em. They’re what you could call well-loved. Oh, and speaking of which – Miss Potts will be sitting in on the meeting.”

Dana felt a momentary flare of annoyance. The intent had been to turn over the contents of Grandma’s safety deposit box to the person the materials were meant for, and let them make decisions on disposition. It sounded like the decisions had already been made out of context –

“Steve and Pepper? They’re good friends. He trusts her. She looks out for him. It’s okay.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be standing by the door. I don’t come any closer unless I’m asked.”

That made her feel a little better. From Grandma’s notes – and the historical record – Steven Grant Rogers could be trusted to be impetuous, whereas Ms. Pepper Potts was one of the most adept, discerning minds of their generation. Okay. She could work with that. She nodded decisively at Hogan, and he smiled.

“No time like the present, huh?”

&&&

It was a big day. Really, it was. The first time that Bucky was meeting someone who wasn’t associated with the Avengers, Stark Industries, or his extensive team of caregivers. A stranger, someone entirely new. Steve didn’t know how Bucky would react, so he suggested that Buck bring his tablet, and the little squishy kitty keychain he liked to handle, and now he sat next to Steve at the conference room table, playing some kind of game on the tablet. He’d muted the sound, but Steve could hear the huffs that Bucky made when he scored, and the grunts when he didn’t. So far it sounded like he was winning more than he was losing.

Steve sat with his hands wrapped around his cup of coffee, staring at the soothing, nondescript art on the far wall, thinking that maybe he should take up painting again. Do something with a little more life than the bland image that stared back at him. They were in an interior room, no outside wall access, just in case this wasn’t on the up and up, and there was some kind of target acquisition device on their visitor. He seriously doubted it, but multiple layers of building, reinforced plating, and Jarvis’s signal scrambling subroutine should suffice to keep them, and everyone else in the building, safe from attack.

Maybe it was overkill, but the strategy was sound, and it made Happy happy.

A soft knock on the door heralded the arrival of someone, and a moment later, Pepper opened the door and stepped back while a young man wheeled in a cart laden with multiple carafes and platters. Pepper instructed him to position the cart on the wall nearest Bucky, and the appetizing odors immediately caught his attention. He glanced up, smiling, his nose twitching.

“Yes, your almond croissants are on the cart. Apple and raspberry, too, Bucky.” 

Bucky got up, looked blankly at the worker bee who stepped out of his way as Bucky went over to Pepper and gave her a hug, then he pivoted on his heel and was at the cart, rooting around for goodies. “Want anything, Steve?” he asked absently as he piled up his plate. Said worker bee was dismissed by Pepper with a soft thank you, and the door shut softly behind him.

“I’m good for now. Too nervous to eat anything else.”

“What’ve you got to be nervous about?” he asked as he plunked himself back in the chair beside Steve. “It’s just – oh. You care about that. The past. Things.”

“Connection, Buck. Yeah, I do care that. I, uh …”

Pepper, bless her, always had a handle on the mood in the room, and she came over to lay her hands on each of their shoulders. “I have to admit I’m very curious to see what this woman has to offer. Thanks for letting me sit in on this, Steve.”

Bucky looked up and grinned at her, exposing croissant crumbs in his mouth and on his chin, then dropped his attention back to the other pastries on his plate. Steve mouthed, “Thank you,” to her, and she smiled warmly, squeezing his shoulder slightly before letting go.

A few minutes later, Happy arrived with Ms. Gould and her supposed precious cargo. Steve’s eyes were drawn immediately to the valise in her hands, while Bucky twisted around and stiffened visibly, his brows scrunching together.

“Sadie?” he asked softly, frowning.

“Sadie was my grandmother. You must be Sergeant Barnes,” she greeted as Happy guided her by the elbow around the table to the other side. No hand shaking, no proximity, until he was fully satisfied. Impersonal, but tactically sound.

“Bucky,” he corrected, then went back to chewing. He turned to Steve and asked, “Do I know a Sadie?”

“We did. Dame, er, woman in our neighborhood,” Steve agreed, nodding furiously, his cheeks pinking with the sudden rush of remembered embarrassment.

“She knew you two,” Ms. Gould confirmed, opening the leather valise and extracting a thick envelope and placing it on the table. Steve could see the label, “Brooklyn Boys” in thick marker on the outside. She used her fingernail to slide the envelope over to him.

He settled his palm on the top of the envelope and looked up at her questioningly.

“She kept it in her safe deposit box. I don’t think anyone knew it existed, let alone what was inside it. There were parts of my grandmother’s life that she held private. Apparently knowing Brooklyn’s most famous heroes was one of those parts.”

Steve held her eyes for a moment longer, then let them drop to the envelope. Bucky was eying it curiously, but not with any urgency. Steve could feel the edges of something inside the envelope. Pepper had explained that Sadie Fitzgerald had gone on to become one of the most famous female photojournalists in history, documenting war zones, refugee camps, USO tours, and DMZs alike throughout the world. 

His heart was beating so fast, it felt like his chest wall was going to give way.

He remembered Sadie and her ever present Brownie camera. Could there be …?

He slid his hand into the envelope and took hold of what felt like hundreds of photographs. Just one was all he needed. Just one of him and Bucky. For a brief second, he closed his eyes and wished on all the stars in the firmament, and then he opened them, looking down at the pile of pictures in his hand.

And there it was.

Him and Bucky goofing off in front of Murdock and Son’s Law. Right there on the street in Brooklyn, big as life. Well, Buck was big. Steve was … _small_. Steve felt the air leave his lungs. He’d wanted something to remember that time so badly, and here it was …

He could feel tears pricking at his eyes when he saw Bucky’s hand reaching from the periphery of his vision to take the photo from his hand. 

“Sadie took that,” Bucky said suddenly, holding the old photo gingerly. “I remember – she was showing off her Brownie. Said she knew the pair of us weren’t gonna amount to anything, but she wanted something to remember us by. Made us stand there in front of Murdock’s for ten minutes while she fiddled with the damned thing. Never did get to the see the picture, though. We don’t look half bad, Rogers. I look better, ‘course.”

“You remember that day?”

“Yeah. Sadie was sweet on you, Steve. Think she was hoping you’d be intrigued by the camera, maybe ask her to step out sometime. Coupla artsy types, the pair of you.” He shook his head. “Never could see what was right in front of you.”

“Nah, I was too distracted to see that,” Steve agreed absently, watching Bucky looking at the photo.

“You remember my grandmother?” Ms. Gould asked then. She was watching Bucky, too. Of course she was – he was the most interesting person in any room he was in.

“Sadie Fitzgerald,” Bucky said the name tentatively, rolling it around in his mouth and tasting it. He seemed to find the flavor palatable. “Never left her house without her Brownie. Pretty thing it was, too – one of them special ones, all art deco-y trimmings. Still a cardboard box like any other Brownie, but she loved that thing.”

Steve looked at Bucky in awe, his eyes full of unshed tears, and Dana was stunned, a smile slowly blooming across her face. Steve suddenly realized that Pepper was standing there with her hands clasped behind her back, sort of dancing to crane her neck to see. He waved her over with a smile, and she eagerly joined him, again placing her hands on Steve and Bucky’s shoulders.

“Huh. Don’t know where that came from. I looked at the picture, and I could see her plain as day. And hey – I remember why this one was taken. You’d just finished painting the sign at Murdock’s after his son Matty was born. Kid wasn’t even weaned yet, and his name was on a sign. Old Jack Murdock was so proud. Sadie asked if she could take your picture with your handiwork, and you tried to escape. I hadda grab you and haul your ass back to get a proper shot.” Bucky leaned across and with a flick of his wrist, fanned out more of the photos. “Will ya lookee here, Steve. All a’ Sadie’s pictures … “

The envelope was full of photographs of the old neighborhood, the streets they played on, got into fights on, wooed girls on (that would be Bucky), and the streets they worked on. There were photos of many different people of the neighborhood, but a surprising number of Steve and Bucky, and Steve alone.

“I told you that Sadie had a thing for you. She was always taking your picture, Stevie. Y’coulda been stepping out with her if you’d’a given her the chance. Maybe settled down, raised a family. Y’know, instead’a, well, all this.”

They went through the photos carefully, reverently, telling a story for each one, more Bucky than Steve after a while. Steve watched him stitch together memories wrenched to the surface by the photos, feeling he couldn’t possibly get any luckier. 

It was the wartime photos that shocked them both into a breathless silence. The first was of Steve and Bucky – Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers – leaning on a Jeep going over plans, with Dum Dum, Gabe, Jim, Monty, and Dernier hovering in the background. 

Most official photographers found ways to cut Gabe and Jim out of photos. They always had an excuse, but Steve and Bucky had both known they didn’t want to show a black man and an Asian – those were polite words for what the photographers said – to a white American audience. Steve was proud of his unit, and proud they’d chosen to fight by his side. He was so pleased to finally see real photographs of Gabe and Jim. Jacques and Monty, too. There were too many photos of Dum Dum’s ugly mug in the historical record, not enough of the other Howlies.

But here in this first wartime photo … all of them together, in one candid shot. Steve recognized the locale.

“She was in Italy,” he breathed, disbelieving.

“According to her notes, attached to the USO. Her job was to take pictures of celebrities and chorus girls. But she always had a mean elbow, and would push her way in to get pictures of the troops at the shows. She tried to follow you as much as possible. There are more in there,” she added, nodding toward the pile that Bucky was pawing through.

Bucky snorted, a sound so reminiscent of the young boy he’d been that Steve felt the world spinning for a moment. Between the pictures and Bucky’s memories, not to mention his recovering accent, Steve felt more unmoored in time than he had since he’d awakened. 

“Sadie was always one to watch. Sale down at Lampkins, she’d knock you flat if you got in between her and the shoes she wanted. Her folks were pretty well off, made it through the big D okay. Every so often, they’d host a block party, everybody brought what they could. Your great grandfolks made sure everyone had something to take home that night. Good people, the Fitzgeralds.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that. Like I didn’t know about any of this, until I started to look through them, and read through her notes. She took a lot of fluff during that war. But sometimes, like that one of you two at the Jeep, she got as close as she could get to get something real. There are more of you two.”

“No one knew who Captain America was back home. But Sadie …”

“She figured it out. When she saw the pair of you together. She knew. She never told. She was working on another book, compiling all the photographs and her recollections. It would have revealed who Captain America was. She set it aside when you came out of the ice, Captain. She didn’t want to compromise your identity once she knew you were alive. And then, well … she was bright and sharp, but age can be unkind. She had a stroke a couple of years ago, and after that …” She shook her head. “She had all this put in her safety deposit box. I don’t think anyone in the family even knew this stuff existed, or had any idea that Grandma knew either of you. The instructions were that nothing could be done with any of this without your explicit permission.”

&&&

“She was writing a book. About _us_ ,” Bucky said suddenly after they’d said their goodbyes to Ms. Gould, gathered up the precious contents of that valise, and brought everything back to their apartment. He seemed to be confused as to why anyone would want to do that as he unpacked the envelope and arranged the photographs carefully on the dining room table. He stood there a moment, staring at the arrangement, then plucked one photo and moved it to another spot, and swapped it out with another.

Steve came up behind him quietly and watched him work for a moment before answering, “Well, sure, Buck. Sadie was a journalist, won big awards and all. The technical word was ‘photojournalist,’ so she mostly communicated through pictures. But apparently she wrote everything in her other books, too. I checked Amazon.com – she published a bunch of books over the years, full of her pictures and stories. She was well respected.”

Bucky twisted around to look up at Steve, and shook his head. “But a book about us. You and me. Steve and Bucky. Not Captain America and … somebody else. _Us_ , who were really were.”

Steve smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. He hitched a hip up and rested against the edge of the table. “Yeah, it would be a new take,” Steve agreed. “I mean, Jim and Monty both wrote memoirs, and Gabe wrote articles over the years for history magazines. Hell, Jacques mighta written, too, only I’d never know it –“

“You still trying to convince everyone you’re not fluent in French, Rogers? People still falling for that con?”

Steve had to stop then, because suddenly, nothing worked anymore.

Bucky was the only person other than Peggy who knew about his ability to pick up languages. He’d had a knack before the serum, but afterward, his eidetic memory allowed him to absorb languages like soap on a sponge. It never even made it into SSR records, just his little secret with two people – Peggy Carter, and Bucky Barnes. 

He smiled at Bucky, willing himself to recover his composure. It took everything he had not to launch himself at Bucky and hug the ever-living life out of him. The memories that seemed to be sparking today were so unexpected, and so precious, Steve wanted to drop to the floor, grab his ankles, and rock back and forth weeping over the miracle of it all.

But Bucky was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to answer. So he did, plastering on a grin. “People still think I’m an old grandpa who can’t figure out which end of the phone gets the power cord, too. It’s helpful, sometimes, having people underestimate me about something. Everybody’s got this idea of who I am, what my strengths are, my weaknesses. And yet, they don’t know so much about me, Buck. They talk freer when they think it’s going over my head,” Steve admitted with a grin.

Bucky’s face scrunched up then, his brows drawn together, and his mouth pulled down. “Hydra made that mistake all the time. Don’t worry about talking in front of the Asset. It doesn’t understand anything,” he muttered darkly, then looked up into Steve’s eyes, the darkness clearing to be replaced by innocent entreaty. “I want to work on Sadie’s book. Can I?”

“What, you mean actually make it into a book?” Steve asked, settling a little more comfortably on the edge of the table. Like everything in the apartment, it was reinforced for use around a super soldier who might forget his own strength. Steve rarely did, but sometimes Bucky seemed genuinely surprised by what he could do, how far he could push things. Steve had to remind himself at those moments that for most of the time he’d been enhanced, Bucky had not been in possession of himself, so the surprise, the dysphoria, was real.

“It’s a bad idea, I’m sorry I brought it up,” Bucky was shaking his head, trembling hand reaching out to gather the photos together and stuff them back in the envelope.

Instinctively, Steve reached out and grabbed Bucky’s right hand, held it aloft over the array of photos. “No, Buck. It’s a great idea. Who else should write about us but us, huh? You and Sadie together, right?”

“Yeah, me’n’Sadie. We always had a lot in common,” Bucky agreed, looking up at Steve with a tentative smile. “You’ll help me?”

“Yeah, it’ll be great, Buck. I was really disappointed the Smithsonian didn’t have much of anything from when we were kids. This legacy of Sadie’s … it’s more than I could’ve hoped for. And sharing it with you, now? Talk about wildest dreams, pal. So, how do you wanna start? You wanna organize this your way, show me what you got? Or do you wanna work together?”

“Um …” Bucky hesitated, his fingers twitching as his hand hovered over the photos. He turned his view back to the photos, and Steve could see Bucky’s features drawing into a tight, anxious frown.

Steve desperately wanted to put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder and calm him with a touch so familiar, but Bucky still wasn’t all that good with touching. So he jumped in with, “Tell you what – you make a stab at it, and we’ll meet in, say, about a week? To look over what you have. And then we’ll figure out what to do next. Just play around with it, see what you like, hmmm?”

The anxiety bubble burst at that point, and Steve watched the tightness in Bucky’s shoulders slough away, his breath coming out in a relieved rush. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

“Yeah, okay. So … anything you need? Paper, pencil …?”

“Tablet?” Bucky grinned at him. He picked up his StarkPad and waved it at Steve. “Think this’ll be easier than scribbling, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, if you want, we can ask Pepper to have somebody scan all the photos and Sadie’s notes. Make it easier to work with ‘em.”

Steve could sense the anxiety meter rising again. Interacting with strangers was another thing that Bucky struggled with. It broke Steve’s heart to see the man who was once so outgoing he was teased for being a walking, talking Blarney Stone struggle so much with just talking with other people. He could understand it, it just always gave him a moment of disorientation despite his best efforts.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Would you …?” Bucky asked softly.

“I’ll ask Pepper if there’s someone who can help, so we know who to talk to any time we need help, huh? A single point of contact. I’ll get right on that, okay. You all right to get started?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Kind of can’t wait to see all of what’s here. It’s funny … I look at the picture, and suddenly it’s like the movies in my head that have been frozen for so long, they come back to life, y’know? Memories I didn’t know I still had. Like maybe there’s a chance I could still be him.”

Steve didn’t know what to say or do. He’d always been so careful not to impose expectation on Bucky, not to hint that he was anything less than everything Steve wanted in his life, just the way he was. Had he said or done something to make Bucky think otherwise?

This time he couldn’t help the fingers that slid over the warm flesh of Bucky’s right hand, and he was rewarded by a slow, calm turn of Bucky’s head to look up at him. The shadowed, miserably expression that met him broke his heart, and he blurted, “You’re you, Buck. You don’t need to be anybody else.”

“But don’t you miss him, Steve? Your friend in these pictures?”

Steve’s hand curled around Bucky’s hand, lifted it so he could rest his other hand over it. “He’s right here, Buck. He’s been here all along. You don’t gotta change a thing to be you. I’m not waiting for some mook from the past to make an appearance. If that’s what you been thinking, y’gotta stop right now. ‘Cos nobody wants that, least of all me. Okay?” he bent down slightly to catch Bucky’s eye, and was unprepared to find his arms suddenly full of Bucky surging to grab him and hug him.

“Y’mean that punk?” Bucky breathed desperately against his ear.

“Course I do, jerk!” Steve exclaimed, folding Bucky into his arms and tightening his embrace. This. This he had missed. Everything else, he already had.

Bucky sniffled and pulled away, wiping his nose on the back of his flesh hand. “Geeze, put a cork in it, Rogers! Go, get me a minion. I got a book to pull together. It’s gonna be a corker!”

Steve missed the feel of Bucky’s body in his arms, but he grinned at his friend’s renewed enthusiasm, accepting it for the gift that it was. “Yeah, yeah, got me running your errands, do ya? You’re on your own when it comes to shining your shoes, jerk,” he added flippantly, and made his way to the door of their apartment.

&&&

The project took several months to put together in the end. Steve asked Pepper for a minion for Bucky, and she assigned a young man who was interning at the Stark Foundation. His degree work was in emotional trauma and PTSD, and he was interning to get practical experience with grants and proposals since that was a big part of any type of private sector therapy or counseling center. 

So Philip Ng became a fixture in Steve and Bucky’s lives. Mostly Bucky, but Phil was always happy to lend a hand with Steve as well. He was a perfect fit for Bucky. And if Steve was honest with himself, he’d admit that Phil was good for him, too.

Photos got scanned, Bucky taught himself Photoshop, and did much of the restoration work himself. He learned how to scan the strips of film, and found more photos that Sadie hadn’t added to the stack. 

Handwritten notes were scanned and OCRed, and Bucky spent long hours correcting the text and adding commentary of his own.

Then Bucky taught himself desktop publishing, designing the book as he went. He fussed over layout, font choices, page size and orientation, kerning, text placement … every aspect of the book consumed him week after week. He’d shown Steve his general ideas early on, and when Steve had asked if his services were needed, Bucky had paused, tilted his head, and smiled. “Draw,” he said. “Draw me your memories. Let’s add them to the book, too.”

So Steve drew. He drew the streets of Brooklyn in 1938. He drew his mother. Bucky’s mother, his father, his three sisters. He drew Sister Bridget who’d taught them both the Palmer Method of penmanship. He drew Father Dennehy who’d been their confessor, their parish priest, and their baseball coach.

He drew the bread lines. 

He drew the WPA.

He drew the Cyclone. 

He drew Bucky, head thrown back in laughter, the sun glinting off the highlights in his sun-bleached hair, off the moisture on his lashes.

He drew the skyline of Brooklyn in 1940.

He drew the rising spire of the Empire State Building, that modern paean to man’s technological brilliance. And the Chrysler Building, in all her art deco glory.

He drew Stark Expo and he drew Bucky saluting him, what they thought at the time might have been the last time.

He drew Professor Erskine. He swallowed the pain of the memory of losing him, and devoted himself for two days to rendering the face of the gentle, funny man who’d given him his life.

He drew Peggy. Philips. Howard. He drew the pod where Captain America was born. He drew himself running down the street, barefoot, his pants too short, and his shirt far too tight. He drew the Hydra submersible.

He drew the USO. In Philly, Newark, Pacoima, Des Moines, LA. The chorus girls and boys who’d been all too happy to offer their services to pop the cherry of Captain America. He drew the Hollywood set where Captain America battled Nazis in serials that kids could watch for ten cents a day.

He drew the Red Skull. Zola. The Hydra weaponry. The Hydra troops. The flames that engulfed Hydra facility after Hydra facility.

Howard’s collection of shields. Peggy shooting him.

Dum Dum. Gabe. Jacques. Jim. Monty.

He drew the Alps.

He drew the Alps, but he couldn’t draw the train. Couldn’t draw Bucky’s face as terror lanced through him and the wind whipped his scream away. 

There were limits even for Captain America.

He drew the Valkyrie, and the view out the forward windscreen. He drew the water rising. His compass and Peggy’s picture. The dog tags in his hand as the ice claimed him. The dog tags that hung around his neck, that he should have returned to their owner, but they’d become a part of him, a touchstone that Steve wasn’t quite ready to let go.

When he was done, Bucky was sitting there next to him, organizing the drawings, gently straightening them up, then draping his arm over Steve’s shoulders. He realized with a start that Bucky had often been there, handing him a mug of coffee, settling a plate of food in front of him, replacing his empty bottle of water with a fresh one. Leading him to bed at night, reminding him to hit the head. As the fever to chronicle his lifetimes in art had overtaken him, Bucky had become his caregiver as much as he’d been to Bucky in the early days of his recovery. And Bucky had risen to the task every step of the way.

“Y’did good, Stevie. Let it out, pal. Let it go,” Bucky said softly, his fingers squeezing Steve’s bicep. He handed Steve a tissue, and Steve looked at it confused. “You been cryin’ for two hours, Steve. Feel better now?”

Steve took stock and found that somehow, he did. He was exhausted, bone-tired and soul-weary. But a weight that he’d become so accustomed to carrying was … gone. Just … gone.

It was a quiet revelation, but as he looked around him, as he took in the focused and calming presence of his best friend at his side, he realized he’d needed to face the past and let it go. Just as much as Bucky had needed to be able to see his own past, and embrace it to make him feel whole.

He smiled at Bucky and nodded.

“Good. We’re gonna have a helluva book, Steve. Sadie’s pictures. Her words and mine. Your drawings. Dana wrote the introduction. The world ain’t ready for this. But it’s going to be beautiful. You’re gonna write the afterword, okay? Tomorrow. It’s something you can do tomorrow. Now, c’mon. Time for you to rest, okay, pal? Let’s get you to bed, and you can rest. You earned it, baby,” he crooned, helping Steve to stand and leading him to his bedroom, where he helped him undress, and tucked him in after he’d slid under the covers.

Buck smiled at him then, a smile that was new, not the remembered smiles of a lifetime ago, not the sad, nervous smiles as he’d begun recovering. It was a smile full of pride, and affection, and something Steve couldn’t quite identify. As Bucky turned to go, Steve called out, “Stay. Stay with me. Just … stay, okay?”

“Sure thing, Steve. Just like old times, when the radiator was out and the snow was falling. Just like that,” he said softly. He toed off his shoes, shucked his jeans and folded them over the back of the chair by the bed. Then he slid into the bed with Steve and scooted over to pull Steve against his chest, and tuck his face on Steve’s shoulder. “This okay?”

“More’n okay, Buck,” Steve agreed, feeling oddly at peace and weirdly at home. He rested his hands over Bucky’s, flesh and steel, and dropped off to the most restful sleep he’d had in his life.

&&&

In the end, they called the book _Brooklyn Boys: To the End of the Line_.

On the cover was Sadie’s photograph of them standing in front of Murdock and Son’s Law, with a series of Steve’s sketches framed in a film strip like what Sadie’s old Brownie had produced. Steve was surprised to learn that Kodak still made that kind of film after all these years. Not everything had gone digital to the point of no return.

The book was massive. It turned out that over the course of three weeks, Steve had churned out hundreds of drawings. Philip had, at one point, simply sat in their living room with a stack of new drawing pads, a fistful of drawing pencils, a pile of erasers, and a pencil sharpener, ready to swap out any component at a moment’s notice when Steve seemed to need it. Bucky had taken over caregiving, ensuring that Steve ate, drank, slept, and took care of basic hygiene. Steve still had no real memory of it, just a vague awareness of the need to commit memory to paper.

In amongst the film stored with the photographs, Bucky had found frames capturing another couple of hundred images. All of those had been printed, scanned, and evaluated for the book.

For every photo, for every piece of art that he selected to include in the book, Bucky wrote a story. A story drawn from the memories that were gradually stitching themselves together. Not all the stories were happy, but they were drawn from a memory that was increasingly more reliable, more robust, more him.

The images had fired neurons which in turn had forged new neural pathways. At one point, Pepper had called in both Bruce and Helen to do a scan of Bucky’s brain, and they confirmed that his brain was healing itself, creating new pathways and connections, at a breathtaking rate.

Bucky Barnes was reborn right before their eyes, but Steve hadn’t seen because he’d been so deep in his own head, so deep in decanting a lifetime onto Bristol board, so deep in … letting go.

After the last drawing was done, and Bucky had joined Steve under the covers, Steve had felt different. Lighter. Younger. He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this, except perhaps on sunlit days when they’d played hooky and gone to the beach together, or to Coney, or just sat on the stoop together, sharing stories and jokes and air.

As for Bucky, he wasn’t the young man who’d gone off to war, although now he had strong, vivid memories of being that young man. He remembered the war, the Howling Commandos. Hydra. Dying. Being reborn as the Fist of Hydra. Being resurrected once again as something new. Philip stayed by his side through it all, and Bucky was coping as well as – no, better – than could be expected.

He’d survived. He’d gone through the burning plains of Hell, and he’d come out the other side. And he’d poured his pain into the prose that accompanied photographs and drawings. He’d created art from anguish.

Pepper insisted that Stark Industries would take care of publication and distribution. She purchased a small but well-regarded publishing house for the purpose. Steve and Bucky both asked that the proceeds from the book go to support services for veterans, those who still lived from their own era, and from every war since. They’d already talked it over with Dana, and she’d agreed. She didn’t need the money, and she knew that Grandma would have liked the selection.

 _Brooklyn Boys_ debuted at the top of _The New York Times_ Bestseller List for Non-fiction Books. Steve and Bucky – and Dana – were invited to promote the book on talk shows around the country, to do signings, to do talks and Q &A sessions. They considered declining, but ultimately, Steve and Bucky agreed, provided that each stop ensure that veterans had priority, and funds raised went to local charities. Dana opted to go back to her life and law practice, leaving the men to be the focus, as her grandmother had intended. 

Bucky found he liked public speaking and bantering with hosts. And he loved meeting their fans, shaking their hands, and listening to their stories. He loved the looks in their eyes when he looked up at them and smiled, handing them their books and reaching out his hand to shake theirs.

Steve loved watching Bucky being happy, so he was thrilled to do anything that was asked of him.

Finally, after several months of touring, signing, and talking, the furor settled down. The book was in its fourth printing, and had already been adopted by numerous universities and colleges as part of their American History curriculum. They received an invitation from Brooklyn City College to actually teach a course about the book. They deferred the decision to the next semester, but they were seriously considering it.

Finally, they were sitting side by side on the couch in their living room, their massive book resting in the center of their coffee table. They’d unpacked their suitcases, and gratefully turned over their laundry to the service that the Tower provided. The refrigerator had been stocked before they’d arrived, and there was a note from Philip congratulating them on managing their stresses and conducting self-care. He’d moved on to a full-time job with the VA, working with Sam Wilson (at their recommendation). Pepper had left them a pile of chocolate, wrapped in a pretty ribbon, and a note that told them they did good. Tony had left them his latest formula for getting them drunk, and Thor had left a cache of Asgardian mead. They were pretty much set for at least a week before they’d need to leave the apartment again.

It had been two years since they’d first met Dana Gould, and been given the gift of Sadie Fitzgerald’s legacy. During that time, Captain America had been on hiatus, semi-retired. Steve had done some charity stuff. A mission now and again. But for the most part, it had been art, photos, the book, the tour.

Bucky.

And now … now it was done. Steve frowned as he realized he didn’t know what he’d be doing tomorrow. His schedule had been decided for him for so long, he felt like he’d forgotten how to play out his days without that structure.

“Sadie would be proud,” Steve sighed, resting his head against the back of the couch and closing his eyes for a moment. Letting it sink in that he didn’t have to move again unless he wanted to.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed softly. “She was a good egg. Smart, too.”

“Yeah,” Steve murmured.

There was a comfortable silence between them, until Steve felt the air shift between them, and he became aware of tension and anxiety starting to spike in Bucky. It’d been a long time since he’d felt that particular alert flare, as Bucky had been steadily becoming his own person for so long, the anxiety spikes had vastly decreased over time. “Buck?”

“In Sadie’s notes. I found something she wrote … that I didn’t put in the book. A picture, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Gonna tell me what? Why?”

“I didn’t have a context for it at first. It didn’t trigger memories like so many other pictures did. It took a while. I guess that’s part of why I held it out. And then I realized it was too personal to share. It wasn’t for the world. It was … it was just for me. And you, maybe.”

“Maybe?” Steve chuckled.

“Yeah, maybe. Here, read it,” Bucky said, pulling an oft-folded piece of paper and handing it to Steve. It was a copy, not the original, but the way the paper was foxed, it was obvious it had been handled often.

“They’re like two sides of the same coin. A cliché , I know, but where one went the other one was sure to follow. And you might think that it was Barnes – beautiful, outgoing, everybody’s favorite all-American – who did the leading. But it was always Steve Rogers. Small, stroppy, and glorious. Wherever Steve went, Bucky was sure to follow, caught in the wake of the personality too big for that small body.

“I had a terrible crush on Steve Rogers, for years! All my friends thought I was sick in the head, liking someone so small, so sickly, so angry, so poor. For me, he was everything that was good in a man – kind, honest, chivalrous, and true. Don’t get me wrong, Barnes wasn’t bad – easy on the eyes, full of flirtation and fun. But it didn’t matter how many girls he stepped out with, he only had eyes for one. Just as Steve did.

“I don’t think either of them really knew, to be honest. It was illegal, but there were ways, especially once they moved into that apartment they shared, in that neighborhood. But I don’t think they ever realized that what they felt for each other was special, out of the ordinary, or in any way remarkable. It’s just what they felt for each other. Yet it was extraordinary and epic.

“I followed them into war, I followed their exploits. I never had the chance to speak with them – the brass wouldn’t let a woman near their precious Captain America. But even at a distance, even through my viewfinder, I could still see the spark that burned between them. It never dimmed.

“I wasn’t surprised that when Barnes died, Steve followed shortly after. Bucky may have always followed Steve, but Steve always followed Bucky, too. There couldn’t be one without the other.

“And now they’ve found Steve in the ice. His identity was revealed during the Invasion of New York. Steve alone looks so very sad, and that spark, it’s so low it might just go out. I’d planned to publish this book as a tribute to those two beautiful young men who’d teased me and laughed with me all those years ago. But seeing him face the future alone … I don’t think it’s right to tell his story when he’s incomplete.”

There was another sentence scrawled at the bottom of the page, the handwriting more spidery than the earlier stuff. A coda written in Sadie’s last days, perhaps.

“Bucky is back. Some day the world will see Steve Rogers smile again. Dana, make sure they get this. All of it. It’s the record of a love story that transcends everything, even death. I’m so grateful to have had the chance to witness it. Love, Grandma.”

Steve’s hand shook a little as he held the page, the folds formed into grooves in the paper, the text worn in those pockets. “Love story? What’s she talking about, Buck?”

“Sadie figured we were more than just friends, more than just pals.” Bucky paused for a moment, lips pressed together as he frowned, his eyes averted from Steve. Then he nodded to himself, and reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wallet-sized photograph, a print from the collection. He handed it to Steve.

It was a photo of the two of them, taken at a neighborhood block party. From the bunting and the clothing, he guessed it was Fourth of July, his birthday and the nation’s. People in the background were having fun, but Steve and Bucky were standing together, Bucky’s hands on Steve’s upper arms, the pair of them looking at each other and grinning like fools, like there was no one else in the world.

“The original had a note. ‘Steve and Bucky together as always.’”

“Yeah, we always were,” Steve said fondly, turning the picture over between his fingers. "I don’t get –“

"And working on this book? I remember, Steve. I remember that she was right. At least for me. I’ve always loved you, I just didn’t have a name for it,” Bucky said softly, his face open and hopeful, yet braced.

Braced for rejection. Bucky was afraid that Steve would reject him.

But that would go against the law of the universe. There was no world in which Steve Rogers would ever reject Bucky Barnes, for any reason.

Steve didn’t have a name for what he felt for Bucky, either. But as he looked into Bucky’s eyes, clear, lucid, very much present and _here_ , Steve realized that the name was love. 

It was love.

He smiled, let the paper flutter from his grasp, and cupped Bucky’s cheek with his hand. “I love you, too, Buck,” he whispered, and pressed his lips to Bucky’s for the first time.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deb again. I'm so pleased to see that people have been checking out Cryo_Bucky's art and dropping kudos, saving bookmarks, and subscribing! There is no fiction in a Reverse Big Bang without the artist. The art isn't an add-on or a complement to the story - it is the inspiration. The story would not exist without the artist first creating the art.
> 
> So, thank you, Cryo_Bucky, for letting me write a story for your art. And thank you to everyone involved with the Cap Reverse Big Bang for making this such an incredible experience. You've spoiled me for life, and for that I am grateful.
> 
> Give us some comment love, won't you?

**Author's Note:**

> Bookmarks, comments, and kudos give us life! We'd love to know what you thought of the art, and the story it inspired.


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